


(burn it down and)

by MagpieCrown



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: (but not for a lack of trying), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Grief, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, No Dialogue, Post-Nirnaeth Arnoediad, bloody metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:13:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23933623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagpieCrown/pseuds/MagpieCrown
Summary: Ehtelion feels like a wound.
Relationships: Ecthelion of the Fountain/Glorfindel
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	(burn it down and)

Ehtelion feels like a wound.

He feels like a bloody pulsating mass of bone and flesh and skin left behind by a mace or a runaway beast of burden. His ribs feel splintered into pieces, cracked away from his fractured sternum, so Ehtelion keeps his breaths slow and shallow.

He isn't hurt, not physically, not that he knows of, but he  _ feels _ like he  _ should _ be, like he is full of blood, seeping and sloshing in the cracks and tatters. So his teeth are ground together, his jaw is locked shut. He doesn't dare open it, because if he does, that blood will come flowing and staining and will never stop, not until he is but an empty husk, and maybe not even then.

Laurëfindil is just as rattled but seems to carry it better: his tall frame trembles only slightly against Ehtelion's, a false, high-pitched note that is safely lost in the cacophony surrounding them, the sounds of a people torn and winded and bled dry.

Ehtelion lifts his head to look Laurëfindil in the face. Laurëfindil's eyes are wide and distant, as if he is listening to something Ehtelion can't hear. His mouth hangs slack but his neck muscles are rictus-taut, straining under a layer of soot and grime. His hair hangs in matted bloody clumps like fur of a sick dog, an insult and a display of a power that destroys and tramples and leaves everything dirty and broken.

Ehtelion wills himself to cry, at Laurëfindil's ruin if not at his own, but nothing comes. If no blood can force its way out of him, nothing else will, it seems.

Laurëfindil shifts his gaze with the monumentality of a rock slide, searches Ehtelion's face in turn. Behind his eyes, something moves, a dark shape, but no name springs to Ehtelion's mind, and so he lets it go.

'I feel like a wound,' he tries to tell him but his lips are soldered together and glued to his teeth.

Ehtelion knows that Laurëfindil can't tend to it now, can't even see to himself, but it  _ hurts _ and he just needs somebody to  _ know _ and--

Laurëfindil's hand, ungloved and sanded smooth with dirt, touches his cheek. Fingers trace along the stuck mechanism of his jaw, looking for a hidden button to press. Ehtelion grins helplessly, an apology, peels his stiff lips back in what must look like a feral display, both a skull and an animal shocked into stillness.

He watches Laurëfindil close his mouth and open it again, cracked lips parting without a hint of wetness. Words straggle up his throat and dislodge a low rumble like a faulty foothold.

And then -- and then it's dead again, and Laurëfindil slumps just a little from his rigid stance in defeat. Whatever he wants to say fails to make it out, and the careful hand shifts against Ehtelion's skin in a tiny spasm, and by the skies, if  _ only _ he could cry now, if only he could make his grief and despair corporeal-- Laurëfindil is carrying the same wound,  _ of course _ he is. And then the din of the camp around them falls away, and Ehtelion's jaw unlocks.

No blood spills out. By all laws and rights it should, but his mouth stays dry, and Ehtelion yawns in quiet agony until his jaw cracks, and his ears pop, and the sounds flood back in.

Laurëfindil is still single-mindedly focused on him, and it's Ehtelion's turn now to thumb through his words and place them in his mouth and then on the altar to Laurëfindil, but nothing, skies, nothing seems to fit, nothing is enough, nothing will help because how can it?

"I love you," Ehtelion offers anyway.  _ The world is burning and we feel like wounds and every breath only pushes ashes and sweat deeper into our rawness, but I love you, I love you, I love you, please be certain of that if nothing else. _

Laurëfindil searches his eyes, finds something, nods. Folds him back into the embrace, sheltering their grief-ruined chests from the remnants of the day.


End file.
